Landscape of Spires
John D. Brewer, Margaret Keane and David N. Livingstone
1.
The Victorian heritage
While the contemporary religious landscape in Belfast is in many respects markedly
different from Victorian times, there remain ways in which the religious geography of
the city continues to manifest itself in the twenty-first century. Although there are
scattered signs then and now that Belfast is not solely a Christian city, a three-fold
religious division between the established Church of Ireland, Presbyterianism and
Catholicism, which mapped itself onto the city’s socio-political topography, persisted
through a range of controversies rotating around penal restrictions, educational
provision, employment structure, and residential accommodation. Periodic rioting
continued throughout the nineteenth century, reinforcing religious boundaries and
politicising faith. Religious segregation thus greatly intensified on account of violence
and the movement of people, the consequences of which still affect Belfast in the
twenty-first century.
Protestantism in Victorian Belfast gave the impression of unity, as witnessed by
the coalition between Reformed theology, industrial power – manifested in the
impressive shipyards, docks and mills – and working class Protestant interests [Fig
11.1 East Belfast Gable Wall]. However, the ecclesiastical landscape of Protestants
was characterised by its diversity. An 1899 volume entitled Illustrated Belfast,
prepared for the National Christian Endeavour Convention, noted that ‘Belfast has
been described as a “city of churches”’ and recorded details of 31 Episcopal
congregations, 49 Presbyterian, 18 Methodist, 3 Congregational, 2 Moravian, 3
Baptist, 1 Society of Friends, 6 Mission Centres, 5 Unitarian, 4 Catholic, and 1
1
Synagogue’. It prefaced this inventory with the observation that it did ‘not take into
account quite a large number of smaller mission halls … erected for the benefit of the
very poor, who will not, as a rule, attend any regular church until their circumstances
are bettered’.
This denominational variety made itself manifest in the visible landscape. St.
Anne’s, Belfast’s first Church of Ireland parish church, for example, had been
completed in 1776 and remained in existence until 1903 when it became the site of St.
Anne’s Cathedral. As the cathedral developed, a more ‘Hiberno-Romanesque’ style
replaced the old Georgian style of the parish church. Gothic arches and stain glass
windows were features of St. Thomas’s Church on the Lisburn Road built during the
Victorian period, a style then favoured not just by Church of Ireland but by all the
denominations. By contrast the mission halls, some independent, others connected
with various denominations, displayed a far more humble architectural presence [Fig
11.2 City Mission Hall]. Presbyterian congregations came in a range of styles. While
Sinclair Seaman’s Church displayed a distinctively nautical motif in its interior
design, Church House at Fisherwick Place, the denomination’s headquarters, with its
40m high clock tower, was built in the form of a Scottish baronial castle. All Souls
Non-Subscribing Presbyterian Church at Elmwood was constructed in 1896 in a
fourteenth century style that became associated with Anglicanism. Other
denominations were also present. While Methodists had been in Ireland from the
1740s, the Methodist Church was only established as a separate denomination in
1878. Baptist history in the island goes back to at least 1640, but the denomination
remained congregationally small with an estimated 31 churches in all of Ireland by
the end of the nineteenth century (Vedder, 1891). The oldest Belfast congregation,
Great Victoria Street, dates back to 1811 though its building was not opened until
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1866.
Churches often moved location or were established in response to the changing
human geography of the city. Among Presbyterians, for example, Rosemary Street,
originally established in 1723, eventually moved away from the city centre in 1929;
Fitzroy, begun in 1813 as the Alfred Place Meeting House, moved to the university
area in 1874; Great Victoria Street Church was opened in 1860 specifically to serve
the growing populations of Sandy Row and Donegall Pass. With respect to
educational provision, the Presbyterian Church made its mark on the landscape with
the establishment of the Assembly’s College in 1853 for the training of ministers. In
an era of cultural, religious, and scientific upheaval, the new college found itself
weaving a way through the storms of political controversy surrounding its first
Principal Henry Cooke, differences of opinion regarding the religious revival that
swept through Ulster in 1859, and the intellectual challenges of the controversial 1874
Belfast meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science (Holmes,
1981; Brooke, 1994; Livingstone, 1997). The Methodists too provided for their
educational needs with the establishment of The Methodist College in 1865. In 1920
Methodist ministerial training moved to Edgehill College.
Catholic religious infrastructure in early nineteenth century Belfast amounted
to no more than three churches – the city centre network of St. Mary’s (1784), St.
Patrick’s (1815) and St. Malachy’s (1844) – one religious community and a handful
of priests trained in a very inadequate seminary (Corish, 1985). The Catholic Church
was ill-equipped, then, for the profound social changes that were in train as the
numbers of Catholics in Belfast rose rapidly, from 2,000 in 1800 to 41,000 in 1861.
Most were rural and landless and were moving to Belfast’s mills and factories in
search of work. At the same time, a significant Catholic religious revival coincided
3
with enthusiastic Protestant evangelical crusades in the rapidly industrialising city.
The ‘devotional revolution’ that occurred in Catholicism was linked to the trauma
caused by the death and emigration, which split up families and uprooted them from
the land, and encouraged Catholics to turn to the Church both for solace and ethnic
identity (Larkin, 1972). Its effects began to be felt in Belfast after the appointment of
Bishop Dorrian in 1865 (Macauley, 1987). Mass attendance amongst the urban poor
increased dramatically, and missions were made a strong part of the effort to
evangelise the Catholic labourers who migrated to Belfast. This devotional
transformation was Ultramontanist in form, characterised by the adoption of Romanstyle liturgy and devotional practices like novenas, the rosary, perpetual adorations,
benedictions, devotions to the Sacred Heart and to the Immaculate Conception
(promulgated in 1854), processions and retreats, all largely unknown before the midnineteenth century (Nic Ghiolla Phadraig, 1995). New devotional tools were used,
such as beads, scapulars, medals, missals, catechisms, and holy pictures (Larkin,
1972), and the head of the Catholic Church in Ireland, Cardinal Cullen, determined
that papal authority would replace Celtic traditions and placed Ireland under the
patronage of the Blessed Virgin rather than St. Patrick.
Initially Catholic development in Belfast was restrained by Bishop Denvir’s
fear of unsettling the tense relations with Protestants in a climate that was punctuated
by rioting and intermittent attacks on Catholic churches and property, but the
changing circumstances that confronted the Catholic Church inevitably became set in
stone and mortar. The ‘craze for church building’ (Rafferty, 1994: 150) that occurred
in Belfast after the famine had to be, Cardinal Cullen insisted, in the ornate Roman
style in order to demonstrate Catholic self-confidence and victory over adversity. He
wished to equal in architecture ‘many of the Roman churches...we are determined to
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be very grand’ (quoted in Bowen, 1983: 146). The impressive neo-Gothic exterior of
St Peter’s (1866) fitted well with this vision and its twin spires, added in 1885, now
dominate the Lower Falls [Fig. 11.3 St. Peter’s Church]. A church building
programme started in 1869 with the renovation of the simple barn-like St. Mary’s,
Chapel Lane. It continued with churches in the Romanesque style to replace St.
Patrick’s, Donegall Street and Holy Cross, Ardoyne, which had pillars, mosaics and
frescoes more reminiscent of continental, not Irish, cultures [Fig.11.4 Mosaics inside
Holy Cross Monastery]. When the church at Clonard Monastery was built at the
turn of the century, to serve the Catholic mill workers crowding into the Falls area
(see Macauley, 1987), the architects returned to the popular neo-Gothic style (Grant,
2003). The needs of the rapidly growing dockland community were met by St.
Joseph’s Church, which was built in 1884. As the pastoral role of the Church
extended to include education, welfare and health-care, the Catholic landscape in
Belfast included a network of schools, hospitals and orphanages. St. Mary’s Teacher
Training College was built in 1900 and the Mater Hospital in 1884. Staffed by clergy
and members of religious orders, whose dress reinforced the continental look to local
Catholicism – Cullen insisted priests around Belfast wear soutanes and Roman hats –
the numbers within religious orders in Belfast increased. So too did the variety in the
orders permitted to work in Belfast, the demand having to be met in part from outside
Ireland. Therefore, presbyteries, convents and monasteries complemented the
programme of church building (Rafferty, 1984). As the twentieth century opened, the
denominational infrastructure represented a visible and confident Catholicism.
5
2.
The Denominational Landscape
The changing positional geography of Belfast churches throughout the twentieth
century is recorded in Figures 11.5, 11.6 and 11.7. These maps show the locations of
Catholic, Church of Ireland and Presbyterian churches and those of other smaller
denominations for the years 1906, 1960 and 1996 respectively, and are largely, but
not exclusively, based on street directories for the years in question. As can be seen,
the distribution of the city’s churches progressively spreads out from the centre in
response to its growing population. The general story that these maps disclose is
plain: for each time period the Presbyterians have the largest number of churches,
followed by the Church of Ireland. What is also clear is that while the number of
Presbyterian and Church of Ireland churches remained stable or declined between
1960 and 1996, the number of Catholic churches has continued to increase from less
than 20 in 1906 to around 30 in 1960 and well over 40 in 1996. The figures for
Methodist churches have remained relatively constant – in the 30s – throughout the
century, though this is complicated by the city mission hall tradition. Taken overall,
of course, the largest increase has been in ‘other denominations’ which include Free
Presbyterians, Baptists, Evangelical Presbyterians and so on.
Church building marked the tide of Catholic population growth and
movement. The location of Catholic churches provides a spatial framework around
which to understand the growth and progress of Belfast Catholics. After initially
clustering in or near the city centre, geographical and social mobility in the nineteenth
and twentieth centuries largely accounts for the founding of parishes in the west and
north of the city and onward to the suburbs. Churches went westward from St.
Mary’s, northwards from St. Patrick’s and southwards from St Malachy’s. Young
women in domestic service and the emerging Catholic professional and business class
6
formed the backbone of new churches along the Antrim Road and in the south of the
city. Comparison of the 1960 and 1996 maps makes plain that later Catholic churches
were mirroring the drift to both suburban semis and large public sector housing
developments in the outer north, especially Newtownabbey, as well as the outer west,
sometimes using nineteenth-century churches as the nuclei before new churches were
built.
Geographical location of Catholic churches mattered in another way. Churches
are powerful symbols of community identity and not surprisingly, plans to erect
Catholic churches often led to contention. There has also been a history of attacks on
churches. Few outside the west of the city were unscathed during the civil unrest after
1968, although only one small church in Sydenham in the east of the city had to close.
There are, however, a number of congregations, such as St. Anthony’s, Willowfield
and Whitehouse, whose numbers have plummeted as parishioners have moved away
(Macauley, 1988). The movement of Catholics to the west has been accompanied by
the building of new churches; ten have been added since 1969. Transfers from other
denominations – St. Matthias on the Glen Road from the Church of Ireland in 1970 –
reflect that Protestant churches have suffered in the same way. Even though a new
larger St Matthias, dedicated in 2004, now sits alongside, the old church survives
[Fig. 11.8 St Matthias, Old and New].
The 1996 map also demonstrates the intensification of ‘other denominations’,
especially in the east of Belfast and Newtownabbey, reflecting their roots still in the
Reformed tradition. The growth of independent fellowships and house churches, it
should be noted, is not geographically marked for these represent ‘hidden spaces’
with no visible landscape. Belfast, however, was never a city entirely of Christians.
By 1906 it had two Jewish synagogues, mostly serving Jews fleeing pogroms in the
7
Russian Empire. Other Jewish spaces – schools, cemetery, social centre and shops
selling kosher products – were concentrated in the north of the city and when the
Somerton Road synagogue was built in 1965, it served around 1,500 members.
Belfast’s Jewish community has dwindled to around two hundred, although other
world religions now feature on the religious landscape. The former Carlisle Circus
Memorial Methodist church houses a Hindu temple where over 1,000 people worship,
and the Muslim community has a small mosque and cultural centre in the south of the
city (Richardson, 2002). The 2001 Census enumerates thirteen non-Christian faith
communities with more than ten members and 1,651 people with ‘other religions and
philosophies’, although this may well be an underestimate.
This general story, then, highlights a number of factors that need to be
considered in understanding Belfast’s ecclesiastical landscape. First, recording the
number of churches has to be interpreted in tandem with location. In many cases city
centre buildings have been vacated and corresponding new churches opened up in
suburban contexts. Second, there are several situations in which church buildings
have transferred from one denomination to another. Third, the growth in independent
fellowships and house churches is not reflected in the visible landscape, but their
presence needs to be registered in understanding the sociology and social geography
of faith in the city. Fourth, the mapping of church buildings does not tell us anything
about attendance, and there are many places where tiny congregations are now
struggling to maintain buildings that once flourished, as we shall see below.
Nevertheless, the presence of a large number of dedicated religious spaces in Belfast
and its immediate environs is a conspicuous feature of a cityscape that can
appropriately be designated a ‘landscape of spires’.
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3.
Beneath the spires
Ulster Protestantism discloses a long history of theological and denominational
division (see Megahey 2000). Brewer (2003a) has shown that these old identities
survive as cultural relics into the modern era in patterns of marriage or cohabitation
between Protestant denominations, with 68% of Church of Ireland respondents in the
1998 Life and Times Survey still having partners inside the denomination, and 72% of
Presbyterians. While it is true that evangelical theology developed hegemony from the
mid-nineteenth century as the dominant sacred canopy (see Brewer, 1998) and as
successive religious revivals took increasingly conservative moves (see Hempton and
Hill, 1992), evangelicalism is itself fractious (Jordan, 2001; Mitchell 2003). Ulster
Protestantism has always been more united politically than theologically (for a review
of denomination differences in Northern Ireland see Richardson, 1998).
To place some order on the variety of denominational life underneath the
spires, we can draw broad divisions within Protestantism. The Church of Ireland,
formerly the established church, represents the Episcopalian tradition with roots in
English rather than Scottish Protestantism, structured around dioceses and with
control embedded hierarchically in bishops. Its cathedrals are normally symbols of the
state, aping the perpendicular style of medieval England, with the flags of regiments
adorning the inside, although Belfast’s St. Anne’s Cathedral is not in this ancient
style. The Presbyterian Church dominates the reformed tradition, and while it has
been subject to several schisms, it is the largest single Protestant denomination. Based
around local presbyteries, authority in the church is decentralised; many of its Belfast
churches were built grand and imposing irrespective of the culture of austerity that
characterised Presbyterianism, reflecting the prosperity of the city at the time of their
erection, Fisherwick Church on the Malone Road being an obvious example [Fig.
9
11.9 Fisherwick Church]. The Methodist Church has a small presence and together
these three denominations comprise what might be called the mainstream Protestant
tradition.
This is complemented by more conservative evangelical churches in the
reformed tradition, like the Brethren, Baptists, and schismatic Presbyterian churches
such as the Evangelical Presbyterians and Free Presbyterian Church, whose church
buildings often reflect the small scale of their membership, although the expansion of
Martyr’s Memorial Church on the Ravenhill Road reflects the growth and selfconfidence of the Rev. Ian Paisley’s Free Presbyterian Church [Fig. 11.10 Martyr’s
Memorial Church extension]. There is also a growing Pentecostal and charismatic
tradition, with emphasis on the gifts of the spirit and the personal experience of God
above liturgy, doctrine and formal worship. Examples are the Elim Church on the
Ravenhill Road, and the independent new churches like Christian Fellowship Church
in Sydenham, City Church in the university area and Whitewell. Both sets of groups
are normally subsumed for social survey purposes into ‘other Christian’, which tends
to conceal the marked difference in style, authority and theology between the
conservative evangelical groups and the Pentecostal-Charismatic tradition.
We can use these broad categories to demonstrate the relative balance of
identification with these groupings across Northern Ireland as a whole, since figures
for Belfast only are not available. The 1998 Northern Ireland Life and Times Survey
(see Brewer, 2003a) revealed that 38% of the sample described themselves as
Catholic, 39% ‘mainstream Protestant’, which breaks down as 15% Church of Ireland,
21% Presbyterian and 3% Methodist; ‘other Christians’ comprised 12% and was the
only category in which there had been growth since the 1991 survey, although it
remains the case that the growing churches are still numerically small and the
10
declining ones big. Religious commitment, observance and practice are declining for
all denominations but especially mainstream Protestant churches and this has been
evident since the beginning of the twentieth century (see Brewer 2004). The trends
disclose falling numbers in the main Protestant denominations over and above
demographic changes, particularly in the Belfast area, the loss of membership
amongst the young and the ageing population of its churchgoers. For example, the
Belfast synod of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland has witnessed a drop in personal
membership of 62.6% between 1963 and 1999. The figure for the Belfast District of
the Methodist Church is 53%, while the Church of Ireland’s Diocese of Connor,
which includes Belfast north of the River Lagan (as well as its rural hinterland), saw a
decline of 35.3 % between 1969 and 1985. Some of this reflects the flight of people
from Belfast, but the ageing nature of Protestant churchgoers in Northern Ireland
discloses the extent of the change in membership amongst the young. As younger
people leave the Protestant churches, they are increasingly disinclined to get married
according to its rites – in 1995, just over half of marriages in Greater Belfast suburbs
like Carrickfergus and in North Down were celebrated in church and two thirds in
Newtownabbey – or bring up the next generation within it. The number of young
people baptised Protestant is declining throughout Northern Ireland. Baptisms fell in
the Presbyterian Church by 68.7% between 1959 and 1999, to just over two thousand
a year, and Sunday School numbers by 49% in the same period. The equivalent figure
for Sunday School numbers in the Anglican Diocese of Connor, which includes part
of Belfast, is a drop of 47% to nearly eight thousand, which declining birth rates
cannot entirely explain.
Whereas churchgoing Protestantism expresses itself through a range of
denominations, Catholicism is a universal, self-contained entity that traces its doctrine
11
and organisation directly to the Apostles. By the beginning of the twentieth century
Irish Catholicism had settled ‘…into a mould that has only been broken in recent
years’ (Corish, 1985: 194). However, it has adapted, if slowly, to the renewal of its
structures that emanated from the Second Vatican Council (Crilly, 1998: 23-44). The
encouragement of liturgical participation by lay people affected the layout and shape
of church buildings. Altars facing the people were installed and newly-built churches
gathered the faithful around the ritual centres [Fig. 11.11 Our Lady Queen of
Peace]. The excessively legalistic moral theology, on which Catholicism in the first
half of the twentieth century was based, has generally been replaced by a pastoral
theology that stresses involvement of the church in communities and sees parish
congregations as faith communities (Fuller, 2002). The Catholic parish system has a
strong geographical focus, and assists in fostering a sense of community in each of
Belfast’s thirty-five Catholic parishes. These parishes are repositories of custom and
tradition, which furnish a sense of place and identity for parishioners, in some of
which are rooted long-established networks of community engagement, charity and
voluntary work (see Bacon, 2003).
Like Protestantism however, the Catholic Church faces changing times and the
secularism of the modern world is impacting on the regularity of Mass attendance and
reducing identification with the church amongst the young. Boal, Keane and
Livingstone (1997) show that only 7% of Belfast’s churchgoing Catholics are under
twenty-five and that loyal churchgoing Catholics tend now to be middle-aged or
elderly and female. Less than half a century ago there was almost universal attendance
at religious services. Grant (2003) remarks on the lengthy queues for confession and
the huge attendances at pilgrimages, novenas and confraternities, and describes
throngs at celebrations to mark the Eucharist Congress in 1932, the Holy Year in 1950
12
and the Marian year in 1954. Many Catholics may have left behind in one generation,
traditions that have endured for more than a century. As the 1990s began, only 75% of
Belfast Catholics were attending Mass weekly and this downward trend continues. A
decade later Hanly (1998) reports weekly attendance levels in Northern Ireland of
57%, yet only 4 in 10 of 25-34 year olds are regular Mass-goers, while McCafferty
(2001) points to working class Belfast parishes where attendance at weekly Mass is
now only one in ten, and falling. Nonetheless, attendance at pilgrimages is
flourishing and popular piety is holding its own (Fuller, 2001). The drop in vocations
to the priesthood and religious orders since the 1960s is blamed on cultural changes in
society and many large presbyteries and convents have opted for smaller premises.
4.
The Conservative-Liberal Spectrum
Crucial though the denominational lens is for visualising the cartography of religious
observance in Belfast, this institutional filter is not the only, or perhaps even the best,
means of grasping the dynamic of religious experience and practice in the city.
Among Protestants the spectrum of belief from evangelical to liberal has been of
critical significance in shaping religious life. While it is difficult to be precise about
definitions, evangelicalism is routinely associated with a number of central
convictions including an emphasis on the infallibility of the Bible, the need for a
conversion experience, and an impulse toward evangelism, while liberalism has been
less committed to these particular theological convictions. While some, mostly
smaller, denominations and independent fellowships are massively positioned on the
conservative evangelical end of this spectrum, the larger denominations have different
proportions of those with evangelical leanings. In a major survey of Belfast
churchgoers conducted in 1993 (Boal, Keane and Livingstone, 1997), the Church of
13
Ireland returned 27% of Belfast members with distinctively conservative-evangelical
convictions; for Presbyterians the figure was 38% and for Methodists 43%. Amongst
Baptists, the proportion soared to 83%, and to 87% among Pentecostal/Charismatic
churches. These differences of outlook are not merely theological of course; rather
they shape the attitudes of churchgoers on a wide range of cultural and political
affairs. The survey, for example, revealed that while 70% of those with a liberal
outlook favoured greater social and religious cooperation with Catholics, the figure
dropped to 30% among conservative evangelicals. On attitudes to Protestant-Catholic
intermarriage, this spectrum again manifested itself. While 27% of Protestant Liberals
were not opposed to such unions, a mere 7% of conservatives approved of mixed
marriage. It also mapped onto party political preference. Support for the DUP was
substantially drawn from the conservative evangelical wing of the churchgoing
population, with liberals dominating the Alliance Party’s church constituency. Similar
patterns were discernible in attitudes to female clergy, integrated schools, abortion,
divorce and the constitutional future of Northern Ireland. Thus, while denominational
affiliation counts for a good deal in understanding the religious landscape of the city,
the evangelical-liberal polarity persistently reasserts itself in the religious, cultural,
social, political and moral realms.
It would be a mistake to assume that the Catholic denominational label refers
to a monolithic bloc, for any impression of solidarity is fractured by the range and
level of theological convictions between what are popularly called in the wider
Catholic world ‘traditionalists’ and ‘modernisers’. From the beginning of the
twentieth century there was always ‘a small rump determined to be more Catholic
than the Pope’ (Rafferty, 1994: 187). The persistence of orthodoxy was revealed in a
survey of over 3000 Belfast Catholic churchgoers which showed that just under half
14
followed all Church teachings compared to 14% who showed high heterodoxy (Boal,
Keane and Livingstone, 1997: 24). Heterodoxy was most prevalent amongst the
young and educated, but clearly the bulk of churchgoers lay somewhere between
these extremes. The conservative-liberal polarity in theology, while real in
Catholicism, cannot be impressed on Catholics to the same extent as Protestants,
although there is a small charismatic movement amongst Belfast Catholics that has it
roots in the modernisation promulgated by the Second Vatican Council. The
Council’s emphasis on self-understanding and the interpersonal dimensions of
spiritual life resonated with the charismatic movement in the 1970s and, although this
has faded, Power (2001) reports that there are 450 charismatic groups meeting
throughout Ireland, with a few in Belfast. The origins of Belfast’s Nazareth
Community lie in the charismatic movement. The Neo-Catecumenal Way
communities, which have Spanish roots, respond in a different way to The Second
Vatican Council through sharing their lives and faith (Murray, 2001). According to
Twomey (2003: 216), these movements are ‘conservative’.
If not in theology, there is clear evidence of marked divisions between
Catholics in attitudes towards wider moral and social concerns. O’Donnell (2001: 71)
suggests that in moral judgements on sexuality and marriage, educated young
Catholics inhabit a different world to their parents. The desire for exclusivity is
greatest among the more orthodox no matter the context: marriage, schooling or place
of residence. The more liberal are four times as likely to marry a Northern Ireland
Protestant and three times as likely to live in a mixed neighbourhood (Boal, Keane
and Livingstone, 1997). Shades of religious opinion may condition the moral, social
and cultural spheres, but when it comes to politics and ethno-national identity there is
broad agreement amongst Catholics. Doctrinal and attitudinal differences have little
15
bearing on support for nationalist/republican parties, which come from all sections of
Belfast Catholic churchgoers. A 1998 survey found that only 1% of Catholic
respondents supported ‘Unionist’ parties and 2% did ‘not know’; 63% were
‘Nationalist’ supporters and 33% neither Unionist or Nationalist, a category that
would include substantial support for Republican parties (Brewer, 2003a: 28).
Nationalist support amongst Catholics has risen from 51% in an equivalent 1991
survey (Brewer, 2004: 280).
5.
New spiritual places
As buildings, churches embody the patterns of belief, practice and observance at the
time of their erection and correspondingly also measure the extent of change in
religiosity as depopulation and other shifts alter the composition of an area. The
immense social change and population relocation that has affected Belfast has put
some churches out of place. The idea of a local church serving the adjacent
neighbourhood survives with the parish structure in the Catholic Church but has
diminished for many Belfast Protestants with suburbanisation and commuting back to
city churches. Protestant churches in interface areas are particularly vulnerable to
decay; the boards and grills to protect windows conceal emptying churches that are
struggling to clutch onto life. Very few have become secular spaces however, for their
elderly members mostly sustain the witness, although they may have to share a
Minister. There is little evidence of the use of deconsecrated spiritual places as family
residences because of the grandeur of Victorian churches in Belfast: they make better
commercial premises [Fig. 11.12 Water Margin Chinese Restaurant, Donegall
Pass] . By contrast, some new church buildings have been erected in the suburbs as
church plants, both by the independent churches as they grow and by the mainstream
16
Protestant denominations, in order to catch up with their geographically mobile
members. Some of the new independent churches are resplendent as a material
demonstration of growth and their doctrine of the prosperity gospel, such as
Whitewell Metropolitan Church in North Belfast; this is perhaps a throwback to the
great Victorian church buildings in Belfast.
New spiritual places are evident also in the religions new to Belfast’s tapestry
of beliefs, such as Islam. Although there is no purpose-built Mosque, services are held
in the Islamic Centre that occupies a Victorian three-storey building in South Belfast.
There is a Hare Krishna Temple in Dunmurry, a Chinese Christian Church in South
Belfast and a Baha’i Spiritual Assembly in suburban Dundonald. Most occupy former
secular spaces and offer good examples of how new spiritual places may re-colonise
secular space, such as disused mills, industrial premises, furniture shops and the grand
Victorian terraces, in preference to new church building. Many of the independent
house churches that wished to break away from institutionalised religion have reinstitutionalised around their own purpose built premises or the re-occupation of
identifiably spiritual spaces from the past. Thus on some occasions, growing churches
have re-colonised former churches, taking over the buildings of congregations long
disappeared, recapturing vibrancy with newer forms of worship and observance. City
Church’s occupancy of the old Congregational Church premises in South Belfast is an
excellent example, the former Church Hall of which however, is now a vacant plot.
6.
Crossover spaces
Divided political spaces result in divided churches, so that the peace and
reconciliation mission of churches requires the negotiation of crossover spaces where
divided congregations can come together, even if only momentarily (on grassroots
17
Christian peacemaking in Northern Ireland see Brewer, 2003b). This can take the
form of voluntarily entering the other’s space to display a willingness to enter their
social world, so that ecumenical and other reconciliation work involves entering the
other’s domain as a way of communicating a willingness to share the wider society.
The Fitzroy-Clonard group, for example, makes a point of rotating meetings between
each other’s premises and most of the clergy groups from local areas alternate
meetings, although a Presbyterian Minister was forced to resign from a Belfast clergy
group in 2004 because the local newspaper captured him in Rome as a member of the
group; some spaces are clearly still too hostile to share. It is for this reason that most
crossover spaces are neutral ones. They are neutral in one of two ways. They are
spaces in mixed areas or with areas with no history of conflict, which means that
South Belfast, for example, is home to several peace and reconciliation initiatives of a
religious and secular kind, such as Restoration Ministries, Women for Peace
Together, PACE, The Way In, Mediation Network and so on. They are neutral in a
second sense in that while some may occupy space in a partisan area identified with
one community or the other they de-sensitize their presence, neutering any markers
that may indicate it is crossover space. Cornerstone Community, for example, in
Catholic West Belfast, looks from the outside like any Victorian terrace; only from
within is it evident that this is a spiritual place for divided communities to share space.
There are also crossover spiritual spaces of a slightly different kind. Churches
have occasionally been used as spaces of reconciliation for bringing political parties,
groups and community activists together on their premises as an informal setting
away from public attention. This has been particularly useful for groups who could
not be seen to meet together. Clonard Monastery in West Belfast, Fitzroy Presbyterian
Church in South Belfast and Christian Fellowship Church in East Belfast have all
18
been used as secret crossover spaces to allow those who are considered publicly
beyond the pale to meet in private [Fig. 11.13 Clonard Church and Monastery] . Of
these, Clonard Monastery stands proudest in the annals of Belfast’s peace initiatives,
all the more surprising perhaps because it is sited solidly in Catholic West Belfast.
Sitting right on the peaceline as a space more recognizably crossover, the ecumenical
communities of Cornerstone and Currach have joined with the Springfield Road
Methodist Church and the Middle Springfield Community Association to form
Forthspring, a new venture in reconciliation and cross-community outreach (see
Cassidy, McKeown and Morrow, 2003). In making creative use of crossover spaces
for dialogue and meeting, churches and para-church organizations have required
vision and courage and demonstrate the trust and legitimacy some spiritual spaces still
retain.
7.
Putting Secularization in its Place
The competing forces of Light and Darkness have long been dominant in the psyche
of Belfast churchgoers. In his 1898 story of the Shankill Road Mission, William
Roome presented this epic battle in cartographic form. The map of light, symbolized
by the locations of churches and missions, stood in contrast to the darkened sites of
public houses, spirit grocers and distillers [Fig. 11.14 Light versus Darkness].
19
Redrawn from Wm. J. W. Roome, A Brighter Belfast: Being the Story of the Shankill Road Mission
(Belfast: Wm. Strain & Sons, 1898)
The anxiety about beacons of light in the midst of spaces of darkness has continued to
be a source of concern among all the denominations, with the progressive forces of
secularization biting ever more deeply into church-going populations. And yet
simplistic conceptions about progressive and inevitable secularization in the wake of
societal modernization are troubling in several respects. Whatever may have been
occurring among intellectual elites, modernization per se has simply not had the
universal secularizing effect on mass populations that theoretical prescription has
diagnosed. Widespread religious belief in the United States, for example, does not
seem to have diminished in pace with modernity. Moreover, while there is evidence
that Protestant denominational church membership discloses significant decline, the
rise of house churches and independent fellowships of the sort discussed above makes
the interpretation of official statistics difficult. However, levels of identification with
20
their religion remain very high for both Catholics and Protestants and there is no
evidence of any immediate rise in unbelief. Comparisons over long time periods
inevitably throw up greater change. In the 2001 Census, 17% registered ‘no religion’
or refused to state an identification; a century before it was only 0.17%. Levels of
strict observance have fallen markedly, but identification with a church still remains
relatively high. From the 2001 Census, it seems that Northern Ireland people remain
religious, with 85% claiming to ‘draw comfort and strength from religion’ and 61%
defining themselves as ‘religious’. It would be foolish to underestimate the depth of
spirituality. We may be witnessing the transfer of spiritual allegiance from the
communal to the private sphere, with church buildings remaining as beacons of light
but reflecting less intense devotion within. It remains clear that the urban fabric of
Belfast continues to present itself as a ‘landscape of spires’.
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to record their thanks to Kathy Apsley for her work with the
Belfast street directors, to Maura Pringle for much cartographic assistance, and to
Edel McClean for providing various pieces of information.
Further readings
Boal, F.W., Keane, M.C. and Livingstone, D.N. (1997) Them and Us? Attitudinal
Variation Among Churchgoers in Belfast (Belfast: Institute of Irish Studies).
Brewer, J.D. (2004) ‘Continuity and Change in Contemporary Ulster Protestantism’,
The Sociological Review, 52: 264-82.
Cassidy, E.G., McKeown, D. and Morrow, J. (2001) Belfast: Faith in the City
(Dublin: Veritas).
Rafferty, O.P. (1994) Catholicism in Ulster 1603-1983: An Interpretative History
(Dublin, Gill and Macmillan)
21
Richardson, N. (1998) A Tapestry of Beliefs (Belfast: Blackstaff Press).
References
Bacon, D. (2003) Communities, Churches and Social Capital in Northern Ireland
(Coleraine: Centre for Voluntary Action Studies)
Boal, F.W., Keane, M.C. and Livingstone, D.N. (1997), Them and Us? Attitudinal
Variation Among Churchgoers in Belfast (Belfast: Institute of Irish Studies)
Brewer, J.D. (1998), Anti-Catholicism in Ireland (London: Macmillan)
Brewer, J.D. (2003a), ‘Are there any Christians in Northern Ireland?’, in A. Gray, K.
Lloyd, P. Devine, G. Robinson and D. Heenan (eds), Social Attitudes in Northern
Ireland: The Eighth Report (London: Pluto)
Brewer, J.D. (2003b), ‘Northern Ireland’, in M.A. Cejka and T. Bamat (eds), Artisans
for Peace: Grassroots Peacemaking in Christian Communities (Maryknoll NY: Orbis
Books)
Brewer, J.D. (2004) ‘Continuity and Change in Contemporary Ulster Protestantism’,
The Sociological Review, 52: 264-82.
Bowen, D. (1983), Paul Cardinal Cullen and the Shaping of Modern Irish
Catholicism (Dublin: Gill and Macmillan)
Brooke, P. (1994) Ulster Presbyterianism: The Historical Perspective 1610-1970
(Belfast: Athol Books)
Cassidy, E.G., McKeown, D. and Morrow, J. (eds) (2001) Belfast: Faith in the City
(Dublin: Veritas)
Corish, P.J. (1985) The Irish Catholic Experience (Dublin: Gill and Macmillan)
Crilly, O. (1998) ‘The Catholic Church in Ireland’ in N. Richardson (ed), A Tapestry
of Beliefs (Belfast: Blackstaff Press).
Fuller, L. (2002) Irish Catholicism since 1950: The Undoing of a Culture (Dublin:
Gill and Macmillan)
Grant, J. (2003) One Hundred Years with the Clonard Redemptorists (Dublin: The
Columba Press)
Hanly, A. (1998), Religious Confidence Survey: Northern Ireland (Maynooth:
Maynooth Council for Research and Development)
Hempton, D. and Hill, M. (1992) Evangelical Protestantism in Ulster Society 17401890 (London: Routledge).
22
Heatley, F. (1988) ‘Community Relations and the Religious Geography 1800-86’, in
J.C. Beckett et al. (eds), Belfast: The Making of the City (Belfast, Appletree Press).
Holmes, R. F. (1981) Henry Cooke (Belfast, Christian Journals)
Illustrated Belfast: Prepared for the National Christian Endeavour Convention,
Belfast 1899 (Belfast: John Adams)
Jordan, G. (2001) Not of this World? Evangelical Protestantism in Northern Ireland
(Belfast: Blackstaff Press).
Larkin, E. (1972), ‘The Devotional Revolution in Ireland, 1850-75’, The American
Historical Review, 77: 625-52
Livingstone, D.N. (1997), ‘Darwin in Belfast: The Evolution Debate’, in John W.
Foster (ed.), Nature in Ireland: A Scientific and Cultural History (Dublin: Lilliput
Press)
McCafferty, P. (2001) ‘Republicanism/Nationalism, Culture and Faith’ in E.G.
Cassidy, D. McKeown and J. Morrow (eds) Belfast: Faith in the City (Dublin:
Veritas)
Megahey, A. (2000) The Irish Protestant Churches in the Twentieth Century
(London: Macmillan).
Miller, D.W. (1978), Queen’s Rebels: Ulster Loyalism in Historical Perspective
(Dublin: Gill and Macmillan).
Mitchell, P. (2003), Evangelicalism and National Identity in Ulster 1921-1998
(Oxford: Oxford University Press).
Macauley, A. (1987) Patrick Dorrian, Bishop of Down and Connor, 1865-1885
(Dublin: Gill and Macmillan)
Macauley, A. (1988) St. Anthony’s Willowfield, Belfast 1938-88 (Belfast: Ulster
Journals)
Murray, J. (2001) ‘A Conversation on The Way’ in E.G. Cassidy, D. McKeown and J.
Morrow (eds), Belfast: Faith in the City (Dublin: Veritas)
Nic Ghiolla Phadraig, M. (1995), ‘The Power of the Catholic Church in the Republic
of Ireland’, in Clancy, P., Drudy, S., Lynch, K., and O’Dowd, L. (eds), Irish Society:
Sociological Perspectives (Dublin, Institute of Public Administration)
O’ Donnell, D. (2002) ‘Young Educated Adults: A Survey’, Doctrine and Life 52 (1):
3-79
Power, L. (2001) Irish Catholic, 20 September 2001
23
Rafferty, O.P. (1994), Catholicism in Ulster 1603-1983: An Interpretative History
(Dublin, Gill and Macmillan)
Richardson, N. (ed) (1998), A Tapestry of Beliefs (Belfast: Blackstaff Press).
Richardson, N. (ed) (2002) A Handbook of Faiths: A Brief Introduction to Faith
Communities in Northern Ireland (Belfast: Northern Ireland Inter-Faith Forum)
Twomey, D.V. (2003) The End of Irish Catholicism? (Dublin: Veritas)
Vedder, H.C. (1891) A Short History of the Baptists (Philadelphia: American Baptist
Publication Society
24
List of illustrations
Fig. 11.1
East Belfast Gable Wall
Fig. 11.2
City Mission Hall
Fig. 11.3
St. Peter’s Church
Fig. 11.4
Mosaics inside Holy Cross Monastery
Fig. 11.5
Distribution of Churches in 1906
Fig. 11.6
Distribution of Churches in 1960
Fig. 11.7
Distribution of Churches in 1996
Fig. 11.8
St Matthias, Old and New
Fig. 11.9
Fisherwick Church
Fig. 11.10
Martyr’s Memorial Church extension
Fig. 11.11
Our Lady Queen of Peace
Fig. 11.12
Water Margin Chinese Restaurant, Donegall Pass
Fig. 11.13
Clonard Church and Monastery
Fig. 11.14
Light versus Darkness
Biographical notes
John D. Brewer is Professor of Sociology at the University of Aberdeen. He has held
visiting appointments at Yale, Oxford, Cambridge and the Australian National
University. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, an Academician in the
Academy of Social Sciences and a Member of the Royal Irish Academy.
Margaret C. Keane is Head of Geography at St Mary’s University College, Belfast.
Her research has centred on community division especially in Belfast and she is coauthor of Them and Us? Attitudinal variation among churchgoers in Belfast. She has
worked on a range of European projects and is currently interested in intercultural
learning.
David N. Livingstone is Professor of Geography at the Queen’s University of
Belfast. He has held visiting positions in both the USA and Canada and is a Fellow of
the British Academy.
25